Full Metal Jacket is the great Stanley Kubrick’s high-octane ode to the war in Vietnam and the impression it left on the American psyche. It is neither definitively for nor against the war; like its protagonist, who wears a peace button but writes “Born to Kill” on his helmet, the film represents the “duality of man.” It is a dark comedy and a serious drama, a war film and a western – like all great art, it isn’t easy to classify and define.

The film opens at Paris Island in South Carolina where new Marine recruits get ready to begin basic training. Their drill instructor, Sergeant Hartman (R. Lee Ermey) wastes no time in bombarding them with intensity and profanity, beginning the process of breaking them down and remaking them as Marines. One of his first acts is to bestow upon the recruits nicknames, including Joker (Matthew Modine), a smart mouth who doesn’t always know when to be quiet, Cowboy (Arliss Howard), from Texas, and Gomer Pyle (Vincent D’Onofrio), so named because of his bumbling, dimwitted ways. The first half of the film is concerned with the process of basic training, focusing specifically on Pyle’s inability to progress along with the rest of the crew.

Eventually Hartman puts Joker in charge of Pyle’s development and while it results in a few small improvements, Pyle continues to make mistakes. Since punishment has done little to motive Pyle, Hartman decides to start punishing the rest of the recruits in order to motivate them to motivate Pyle to get better. This, of course, earns Pyle the animosity of the rest of the recruits, who take it out on him after lights out. Though Joker hesitates, he ultimately delivers a few blows of his own to Pyle, which proves to be a turning point. Pyle, formerly a gentle, chubby misfit with the eagerness of a puppy dog, becomes alienated by having everyone – but particularly Joker, with whom he had bonded – turn on him. Trained along with the rest of the recruits to develop a love affair with his riffle, it becomes his only friend and confidante. Though Pyle makes it to the end of basic training, the experience destroys him, leading to an incredible act of violence.

The second half of the film takes place in Vietnam and is more disjointed than the first, unfolding as a series of vignettes that focus on Joker’s work as a military reporter. When the Tet Offensive begins Joker and his colleague, Rafterman (Kevyn Major Howard), are sent to cover combat in Phu Bai, finally getting to see the action that Rafterman has long been craving. Joker is reunited with Cowboy when he and Rafterman join Cowboy’s squad as they manoeuvre through dangerous territory, experiencing a series of adventures and losing several members of the squad along the way.

Though the second half of the film features the action set-pieces, it’s the first half that is arguably the more memorable and stronger half. Pyle and Sergeant Hartman are the story’s most superbly drawn characters and D’Onofrio’s performance the absolute best in the film. The story loses something vital when these two depart the narrative because while Joker is an adequate bridge between the audience and the action on-screen, he’s doesn’t stand out as much as they do and he’s somewhat lacking in terms of relatability. Pyle, with his intense vulnerability, desire to please, and all too human weakness is a character that the audience can easily have a vested interest in. Much of the film’s heart goes out along with Pyle, despite his turn towards the dark side.

That being said, however, while the first half is narratively stronger, the second half is more ideologically important. While ostensibly a war film, Full Metal Jacket abides by certain tropes belonging to the western and, indeed, explicitly aligns itself to the western genre through a variety of references in the second half. Joker constantly pulls out his John Wayne impression at tense moments and at one point the situation in Vietnam is compared to a western movie in which the American soldiers are cast as cowboys and the Vietnamese are cast as Native Americans. Full Metal Jacket is, in its way, a frontier western wherein the mythical frontier over which America meets its Manifest Destiny is transplanted from the already conquered and settled United States to Vietnam. However, while the story of the American frontier has a happy ending (at least from a white colonialist/expansionist point-of-view), the story of the Vietnamese frontier is a story of failure. Often cited as a contributor to the loss of America’s innocence, the war in Vietnam also marks the end of the “western myth,” the myth of American invincibility.

This idea of innocence lost is further emphasized by the film’s final scene, in which soldiers march while singing the Mickey Mouse Club theme song. This scene is meaningful on a couple of different levels, the first being in terms of the pejorative use of the term “Mickey Mouse.” In slang “Mickey Mouse” is used to denote something that is amateurish or senseless – in Pyle’s last scene the term is used to describe his behaviour, in the film’s final scene it can be read as describing America’s involvement in the Vietnam conflict. On another level, the use of the song can be seen as a commentary on the American ethos. During the basic training section the recruits are consistently seen reciting rhymes as part of their training. The implication inherent in using the Mickey Mouse song, a song well-known to children, is that all Americans are recruits being indoctrinated to carry out an expansionist mission.

If Full Metal Jacket is not the most effective or affecting of Kubrick’s films, it is nevertheless a great film that any director would be proud to call his or her own. It has its flaws, as most films do, but its strengths are numerous and the impression that it leaves on the viewer is enduring. Watch it once and you’ll never forget it.

Watch a trailer for the film here: